Re: Can't make backup

Please, don't top post!

Sebastián Baioni wrote:
>>> Every day we run a Windows Programmed pg_dump, it used to
>>> work fine with PostgreSQL 8.0, but since we installed the new
>>> version we are not able to make a backup. We tried to make a
>>> whole database backup and it never ends. We tried to backup
>>> table by table and it reachs a table of 50,000 rows and it
>>> keeps for hours in that table, we started it again and
>>> pg_dump backups that same table in seconds, but it stops in
>>> another different table.
>>> If we watch the server message.# we don't have any error,
>>> it's like some tables were locked and pg_dump would keep
>>> waiting for the table to be unlocked.
>>
>> If pg_dump is locked out, there should be entries in
>> pg_catalog.pg_locks. Check when the dump hangs!
>
> I don't have any table called pg_locks in pg_catalog.

It is a view.

> We let running pg_dump 8.2.5 at 1:30 AM after an automatic
> reboot of the PostgreSQL service and it didn't finish. When I
> came to the office at 9:00 there were a lot of locks, but all
> of them were from the pg_dump conection.

Is there any row in pg_locks that has a "false" in "granted"?
That would be a wait for a lock to be released.

Does pg_dump consume any processor cycles?

You say "Windows Programmed pg_dump" - what exactly is that?
Can you use a debugger to see where your program hangs?

Yours,
Laurenz Albe